Accusations Fly Over Agency's Failure to Report Child Deaths

Former Legislative Director Aaron Campbell says he personally briefed Department of Children's Services (DCS) Commissioner Kate O'Day about her responsibility to inform lawmakers of each child fatality and near-fatality in the state — which DCS now acknowledges it has not done in nearly two years. The agency last week released partial information about 31 children who died in the first six months of 2012. The children had all either been in state custody, the subject of an open DCS investigation or had been investigated but whose cases had been closed before they died. DCS lawyer Douglas Dimond conceded that the agency had been violating the law in its requirements to report child deaths. The Tennessee has the story